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The Koch brothers are funding Facebook’s newest fact-checking partner

by MattieNsk58774 Posted on April 29, 2019

Is Facebook trying to solve its fake news problem by partnering with … climate deniers?

Last week, social media giant Facebook announced that it would be partnering with CheckYourFact.com, the fact-checking offshoot of the Koch-funded, right-leaning news outlet The Daily Caller. The fact-checking site will help provide third-party oversight of Facebook’s news content, including stories about global warming.

The Check Your Fact site says it is “non-partisan” and “loyal to neither people nor parties,” describing itself as an “editorially independent” subsidiary from The Daily Caller, though it receives funding from both The Daily Caller and the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Daily Caller was founded by Fox News political analyst Tucker Carlson, who is known for hosting climate deniers on his show.

Critics say the deal say the partnership is a case of a fox guarding the hen house (Or, at least, Fox News guarding the greenhouse). “It is truly disturbing to hear that Facebook, already known to be a dubious organization with an ethically challenged CEO, is partnering with ‘Daily Caller,’ which is essentially a climate change-denying Koch Brothers front group masquerading as a media outlet,” leading climatologist Michael Mann told E&E News. “If they fail to cease and desist in outsourcing their ‘fact-checking’ to this bad faith, agenda-driven outlet, they will face serious repercussions.”

Facebook did not respond to Grist’s request for comment.

But is Check Your Fact really as bad as all that? In February 2018 the site was found to be “compliant or partially compliant” with the Poynter’s International Fact Checking Network Board’s standards, though the site was placed under review in November for not clearly listing its funders. Recently, Check Your Fact looked at President Trump’s claims that wind turbines cause cancer, and found them to be false. However, their statement also included quotes from National Wind Watch, an anti-wind advocacy group.

Facebook has contracted with several organizations to identify factually disputed stories, but its relationship with fact checkers has long been rocky. In 2017, several journalists expressed concerns about the company’s lack of transparency, saying the Facebook’s fact-checking effort had not been effective. More recently, both the Associated Press and Snopes.com, cut ties with the company, with Snopes’ managing editor saying she felt Facebook essentially used them for “crisis PR.”

This isn’t the first time Facebook has entrusted its fact-checking with a website associated with climate denial: In the fall of 2017, Facebook named the right-wing, partisan Weekly Standard as a fact-checking partner. According to IFCN officials, the organization does not take partisanship of the news outlet into account when verifying an organization, only partisanship of the fact-checking itself.

“[U]ltimately, it’s important that people trust the fact-checkers making these calls,” wrote Facebook product manager Tessa Lyons as part of the company’s Hard questions series. “While we work with the International Fact-Checking Network to approve all our partners and make sure they have high standards of accuracy, fairness and transparency, we continue to face accusations of bias. Which has left people asking, in today’s world, is it possible to have a set of fact-checkers that are widely recognized as objective?”

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The Koch brothers are funding Facebook’s newest fact-checking partner

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Jimmy Kimmel Makes Impassioned Plea to Save Obamacare After Son’s Heart Surgery

by BrianLaguerre99 Posted on May 2, 2017

Mother Jones

In an emotional plea to protect the Affordable Care Act, Jimmy Kimmel opened his show on Monday by sharing the news of his newborn baby’s open-heart surgery just 10 days before. The late-night host prefaced the monologue by saying the story had a “happy ending”—both the baby and mother were now home and in good health—but revealed that the heart-wrenching experience had moved him to speak out against President Donald Trump’s desire to repeal his predecessor’s signature health care law.

“We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, but until a few years ago, millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all,” Kimmel said visibly shaken. “You know, before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease, like my son was, there’s a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance, because you had a preexisting condition.”

“If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make.”

The impassioned monologue was roundly praised by audience members and Democratic officials online. Barack Obama even weighed in to thank Kimmel for sharing his personal story:

Kimmel’s powerful address comes amid the Trump administration’s second harried attempt to dismantle Obamacare, after Republicans pulled their repeal bill in March.

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Jimmy Kimmel Makes Impassioned Plea to Save Obamacare After Son’s Heart Surgery

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S&P Says Obamacare Isn’t Failing

by TeriHLMGdow Posted on December 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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S&P says that Obamacare isn’t failing at all:

With better data supported by actual individual market experience, most insurers put in for increased premium pricing for 2016. Also, several insurers introduced narrower network products to control medical costs. Regulatory changes such as tightening the SEP rules also helped this year-over-year improvement. We expect the full-year 2016 underwriting losses to be lower than in 2015 and 2014.

….Insurers have put in meaningful premium rate increases for 2017…but we view 2017 as a one-time pricing correction….For 2017, we believe the continued pricing correction and network design changes, along with regulatory fine-tuning of ACA rules, will result in closer to break-even results, in aggregate, for the individual market, and more insurers reporting profits in this segment.

Hey, how about that! Now that insurers are pricing their coverage about where the CBO expected it to be, they’re starting to move toward profitability. Who could have guessed that?

This reminds me of something. A lot of lefties were unhappy with Obamacare because, in the end, it didn’t include a public option. Thanks, Joe Lieberman! But the truth is that although a public option would have been nice, it’s not really what Obamacare needed. What Obamacare needed was two things:

About twice as much funding.
A higher tax penalty for not buying insurance.

That’s it. But Democrats were fixated on Obamacare costing under $1 trillion (over ten years), and that prevented them from creating a program that people truly would have loved. If, instead, they had supported funding of, say, $2 trillion, generous subsidies would have continued into the working and middle classes; maximum deductibles could have been set much lower; and more insurers would have entered each local market. Combine that with stiffer penalties to back up the individual mandate and a lot more young people would have joined the insurance pools—and would have done so without resentment since the cost would truly be affordable. All of this together would have made Obamacare far more popular with the public and much easier to manage for insurers.

But where would that extra trillion dollars have come from? This is where the hack gap comes into play once again. If this were a Republican plan, and it were something they really wanted, they wouldn’t have bothered with funding. They would have just made up a story about medical inflation coming down (which it is) and broader health coverage leading to improved economic growth blah blah blah. Democrats weren’t willing to do that. Alternatively, they could have just funded a $2 trillion program. That would have meant even higher taxes on the rich and maybe some higher taxes all the way down into the upper middle class. Or maybe a small increase in the payroll tax. Who knows? There are plenty of possibilities.

But Democrats weren’t willing to be hacks and they weren’t willing to raise taxes more than they did. This is despite the fact that the public plainly doesn’t care much about deficits no matter how much they may say so, and the public is positively delighted with higher taxes on the rich. Multiple polls repeatedly show this by a wide margin.

This would have solved virtually every problem Obamacare has had. Higher taxes on the rich would have been a populist winner. Higher funding would have made the program genuinely affordable and far more popular. And the increase in both funding and the mandate penalty would have made the eventual insurance pool closer to what insurers expected, which would have kept them nearer to profitability and truly duking it out to gain market share against their competitors. It was a missed opportunity.

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S&P Says Obamacare Isn’t Failing

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Can This Charming New Host Convince Millennials to Love “A Prairie Home Companion”?

by Dolly2500yoc Posted on September 28, 2016

Mother Jones

On July 1, Garrison Keillor said goodbye on his final broadcast of the radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion. Fans bemoaned the loss of the avuncular host, who had for 42 years regaled them with characters like Guy Noir, cheery ads for powder-milk biscuits, and the imagined inhabitants of a fictional Midwestern town, “where all the women are strong, all the men good-looking, and all the children above-average.”

With Keillor’s retirement, Lake Wobegon may go the way of Atlantis, but that doesn’t mean the show is over. “It feels like something ends and something else is about to happen,” Keillor told his audience during his denouement. That something is 35-year-old Chris Thile, a multiple Grammy-winning mandolin prodigy and leader of the insanely talented Punch Brothers, whom Keillor has anointed as his successor.

Thile first made waves with Nickel Creek, the new-grass band he co-founded in his home-state of California at age 12. Since then, he has appeared dozens of times as a musical guest on Keillor’s program, collaborated with virtuosos such as Béla Fleck and Yo-Yo Ma, and in 2012 was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (a.k.a “genius grant”).

In his new role as radio host, Thile aims to preserve the spoken-word humor, musical showmanship, and even the fake commercials that have garnered A Prairie Home Companion three million loyal fans in the US. But judging by the guests, Thile’s Companion already feels edgier than Keillor’s ever did—White Stripes guitarist Jack White, comics John Hodgman and Aparna Nancherla, soul group Lake Street Dive, and cellist Esperanza Spalding will appear on the first few episodes.

Here are a handful of reflections Thile shared with me as he prepares to step into Keillor’s shoes on October 15:

On his first Prairie Home Companion gig: “My life has always been intertwined with the show. Some of my very earliest memories are being in our living room, listening to the show is when I was two years old, and Garrison’s voice emanating from the radio in the corner. At that age it was kind of unclear to me whether that might actually be my dad’s voice just coming through the radio instead of from his body. Not that they sound similar—but just sort of this warm, authoritative, male voice.

Playing the show for the first time at 15, I was already aware of the enormity of the moment. Even for this little bug, it was a realization of a goal at a very young age—like, ‘Oh, this is something I’ve dreamed of happening.’ Garrison signed my program and wrote me a limerick.

There once was a fellow named Thile. Played mandolin wild and freely. He played for the town, while riding around, on a bicycle doing a wheelie!

On the fateful phone call from Keillor: “He called me out of the clear blue sky. I had his number in my phone, but it was always nerve-wracking when he would call and his name shows up on caller ID. You know, it’s a long, grand name accompanied by this incredibly grand voice. I was practicing, in the middle of a duet with the bassist Edgar Meyer. I let it go to voicemail because I thought to myself he probably wants me to play on next week’s show or something, and there’s no way I can do it. I listen to the voicemail and it says imitates Keillor‘s voice ‘Chris I have something that may be of some interest to you…’

“So I called him back and he outlined his exact plan. I was pacing as it started dawning on me what he was talking about. I had to leave the bus and just started like walking all over Ann Arbor trying to process all of this. As he came to the end of the pitch, I am struggling for words, because even then there was this air of inevitability about it. Almost like the forehead slap of, Of course this is what I’m going to do; of course I’m going to try this, as crazy and scary as it seemed at the time. He said, ‘You host a couple of shows, you know, early next year, and we’ll see where we are.’ And that’s what we did.”

On how Thile’s Prairie Home Companion will be different: “We’re going to have a spoken-word guest every show, who may often be a comedian, actor, a poet. I suspect you’ll still be hearing about powder milk biscuits, and you may still be encouraged to eat enough ketchup and potentially be soothed by a piece of rhubarb pie, because we just can’t help ourselves. But the world has changed a lot in the last 40 years. Garrison was keenly aware of that, but you could look out into the audience at a lot of these live shows and see a lot of 50-plus-year-old white folks.

“My dearest hope is that we can create the kind of environment that’s representative of everyone in this beautiful country of ours, especially now. These are hard times. The last couple nights, it’s like I haven’t been able to look directly at the TV—as if it’s the sun. I try and catch up over Twitter afterward, almost it’s like that board from elementary school with the little hole cut into it so you can check out the sun, like check out an eclipse, with those little rudimentary tools. It’s an oft-uttered statement but these are troubled times. I am all the more fervently seeking the beauty that human beings are capable of developing, and I want the show to be a place for those beautiful things. So that, quite frankly, is our great goal, our great challenge.”

On his favorite musical act of late: “I was with Béla Fleck and his wife Abigail Washburn, and they were spending time with this adopted daughter of someone they know. And this little girl, she was improvising a song and making up lyrics on the fly. She sang the words, “My heart breaks into song.” And I was dumbstruck. I mean I didn’t stop the song, but afterward I asked her, “Did you say, ‘My heart breaks into song?'” And she said, ‘Yeah.’ I would just love for this show to be an opportunity for everyone’s hearts to break into song—or to break into laughter, to break into thought, to break into imagination. Our hearts should be breaking right now. But to figure out a way to turn that into energy we can use to comfort each other.”

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Can This Charming New Host Convince Millennials to Love “A Prairie Home Companion”?

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Swift Boat 2.0 Is Now Underway. Where’s the Press?

by GeriSimos937 Posted on August 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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As we all know, the loathsome Swift boating of John Kerry in 2004 worked a treat. So this year Trump supporters are engaging in Swift boat 2.0: a surprisingly overt campaign claiming that Hillary Clinton is seriously ill but covering it up. Sean Hannity has been the ringleader, talking it up almost nightly on his show. Rudy Giuliani joined the fun this weekend, and Katrina Pierson, the Baghdad Bob of spokespeople, suggested that Hillary has “dysphasia.” Even the candidate himself has gotten into the act:

Trump has followed this up with references to Hillary not having the “mental and physical stamina” to be president—wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

This is all literally built on nothing. There’s a video of Hillary slipping on an icy step outside a church a few months ago. There’s a video of her making a funny face while talking to some supporters. That’s it. Unlike Trump himself, Hillary has released a detailed statement from her doctor, and there’s nothing wrong with her.

I know how tiresome it is to wonder how the press would treat something like this if it came from the other side, but, um, how would the press treat this if it were coming from the Hillary Clinton campaign? My guess: it would be like World War III. They would be demanding proof, writing endlessly about how this “once again” raised trust issues, and just generally raising front-page hell over it. Which would be perfectly fair! But when Trump does it, it’s just another boys-will-be-boys moment. Yawn.

Trump has done so many disgusting things that I know it’s hard to keep track sometimes. But this ranks right up there, and he deserves brutal coverage over it. He’s not really getting it, though. All the usual liberal suspects are on this, but the mainstream press has treated it like yet another occasional A14 blurb. Where’s the outrage, folks?

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Swift Boat 2.0 Is Now Underway. Where’s the Press?

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Trump Says His Controversial Comment About Abortion Was "Excellent"

by ErickaFontenot Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump ignited a firestorm last week when he said that he wants to outlaw abortion and punish women who obtain abortions anyway. He soon clarified his comment, suggesting that women who get abortions should not be penalized. But most recently, he doubled down on his initial statement.

Here’s the chronology: During an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last Wednesday, Trump said that abortion should be banned and that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who obtain abortions once they are outlawed. Faced with immediate criticism from both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights groups, his campaign issued a statement saying that Trump believed that only the abortion provider, not the woman, should be held legally responsible.

But a few days later, on Saturday, Trump essentially reaffirmed his initial comments. His answer to Matthews’ question was “excellent,” Trump told talk radio host Joe Pags, in an interview flagged on Tuesday by the liberal website Right Wing Watch. Here’s the exchange:

TRUMP: A lot of people thought my answer was excellent, by the way. There were a lot of people who thought that was a very good answer. It was a hypothetical question. I didn’t see any big deal and then all of a sudden there was somewhat of a storm. And you know, it’s interesting, this morning I’m hearing two hosts on television that were critical and they said, “We really thought his first answer was very good.” Because you can’t win. “We thought it was good, what was wrong with his first answer?” And I heard a pastor, who is a fantastic pastor, saying, “Well, you know, if you think about it, his first answer was right”…

PAGS: Well, your answer was consistent with conservatism but Chris Matthews has an agenda, so I’m not even wondering about the question because I thought it was loaded and stupid and hypothetical.

TRUMP: It was disgraceful.

PAGS: Why go on the show? Why go?

TRUMP: I heard people defending it today. Now they defend it. Now they say, “It was really right.” The whole thing is just so—look, the press is extremely unfair.

Trump, though, was not done with this subject. The next day, he had yet another position on abortion. He appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and stated that the current law on abortion should not be changed. Once again, his campaign had to renovate his message. It quickly walked back this statement, asserting that Trump meant the law will remain the same “until he is President.”

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Trump Says His Controversial Comment About Abortion Was "Excellent"

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John McCain Concedes the GOP May Have Lost Hispanics

by RayfordHaydon Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appears to have conceded that the Republican Party has alienated Hispanic voters and will have to rely increasingly on white voters to win in November.

“An interesting phenomenon right now is the huge turnouts for the Republican primaries, low turnout for the Democrat primaries,” McCain said in a Sunday appearance on the Phoenix-based show Politics in the Yard. “Now if all those people would get behind the Republican candidate, I think we could win this election despite the alienation, frankly, of a lot of the Hispanic voters.”

McCain will face perhaps his toughest re-election fight this fall. A former champion of comprehensive immigration reform, he is likely to struggle in a year in which Donald Trump is pushing Latinos away from the Republican Party. McCain will face off against several Republican primary challengers in August. Polls show McCain currently tied with his general election opponent, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.).

McCain has steered clear of Donald Trump, who is the favorite to win the Arizona Republican primary on Tuesday night. The Hill reported last week that McCain would not attend any of the rallies Trump held in Arizona this weekend. McCain endorsed his colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in the presidential primary; after Graham dropped out, McCain said he would not endorse anyone.

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John McCain Concedes the GOP May Have Lost Hispanics

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Meet the Star of Judd Apatow’s New Netflix Series "Love"

by ThelmaPeyser Posted on February 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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It sounds so familiar. Nice guy meets self-destructive girl. Guy falls for girl, who refuses to be loved. Yet, Love, the new Netflix dark comedy created and co-written by director Judd Apatow, comedian Paul Rust, and Girls writer Lesley Arfin, transcends the usual clichés with complex, smartly written characters.

Rust, 34, stars as Gus, an aspiring TV writer who finds himself suddenly single. Mickey, played by Community star Gillian Jacobs, is a party girl as desperate for love as she is unhinged. Hilarious, tender, and laced with moments of cringe-worthy humiliation, the series is a darkly funny and fairly realistic portrayal of the awkwardness of the human experience—an introspective look at two lost souls as they navigate Los Angeles and bumble through their difficult intimacy in a painfully relatable way.

Rust needed his sense of humor growing up Catholic in Le Mars, Iowa (population 9,826). In his early 20s, after graduating from the University of Iowa, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began acting and performing with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and writing on shows from The Very Funny Show to Arrested Development, and the popular podcast Comedy Bang! Bang! He also landed a leading role in the 2009 comedy film I Love You, Beth Cooper.

His other recent escapade—not counting his marriage to co-writer Arfin last October—has been co-writing Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (a.k.a. Paul Reubens’ big comeback), a film due for release March 4. I caught up with Rust to talk Catholicism, how parking affects LA hookups, and why he named his old band—he plays guitar, too—Don’t Stop Or We’ll Die.

Check out the Love trailer, and then we’ll talk.

Mother Jones: Okay, let’s have you describe these characters.

Paul Rust: Mickey is from New Jersey. She works at a satellite radio station, and she’s a cool person. She dresses cool and has great taste. She’s also struggling with addiction and substance abuse problems, but deep down she realizes she’s at a point where she doesn’t want to keep doing that, and she wants to improve her life.

Gus is a guy from South Dakota who’s an on-set tutor for child actors. He’s a people pleaser who’s motivated by his fears and anxieties. The two of them meet, and for Gus there’s this sort of attraction: “Maybe if I date this person who’s dangerous, it’ll get me out of my shell.” Conversely, Mickey is like, “I feel reckless, so maybe if I date this person who seems to be grounded, that would give me something I’m missing.” In the show we’re trying to deconstruct that idea. Mickey, under her rough exterior, there’s actually something very tender about her. And for Gus, somebody who looks sensitive on the outside is maybe angrier on the inside.

MJ: How does Los Angeles itself shape the narrative?

PR: Just the way LA is laid out—30 miles of disparate neighborhoods—adds to the loneliness of the characters. There’s a lot more space to feel isolated in. In Los Angeles, you have to meet the person, then walk out separately to your own cars, and follow the person to their neighborhood, and then pray that street parking isn’t going to mess things up. I think a lot of nights together have been spoiled by somebody not being able to find a parking spot and saying, “Why don’t we just go home?”

MJ: What did comedy mean to you as a kid?

PR: Growing up in a small town, in the Midwest, and Catholic: Those are sort of three layers of repression. My mom was my English teacher in high school. So to be able to bend the rules and be the class clown and get to take on my religion, my mom, and my town all at the same time was glorious. I think the desire to be funny was a mixture of wanting to be liked but also wanting to throw your elbows a bit. If you’re cracking a joke in school, it’s sort of anti-authority, but it’s in the nicest, “Please like me!” way.

MJ: Do you mine your upbringing for comedic fodder?

PR: In the writers’ room, we like this idea that Gus presents himself as a nice person, but is it really nice if it’s coming from a hostile place? I’m sure that had to do with my upbringing in the church. You do feel these kinds of hostile feelings, and it’s like, as long as you put these feelings way down, it means you took care of it. But I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that’s all they do, that’s fine by me. If they’re good at churning out tortured artists, that’s great! Laughs.

MJ: The show almost seems to debunk the “nice guy” archetype, because Gus seems so nice, and then he’ll do things that really aren’t.

PR: The term we use is, “How do we scuff up Gus?” Because Mickey is presented as this self-destructive person, we were really conscious of not wanting this to be the story of, “Hey, if this girl could just realize to accept the love of this kind man, who could solve all her problems and fix her…” To suggest that that’s not healthy was important to us.

MJ: So, what’s it like co-writing with your wife? I mean, what if you had a fight the night before?

PR: Because I think so highly of Lesley and her writing, I fully trust her take and her opinion. She’s very sharp and intuitive. If there is a disagreement, we can usually work through it because the relationship stuff is the real work. Anything to do with the show is fun and entertainment.

MJ: In a recent interview, you said you didn’t want to call this show “honest,” but maybe “truthful.” What did you mean?

PR: Maybe it’s splitting hairs. I think “honest” sometimes gets used to describe a real depiction of real life. I don’t think that’s necessarily what we’re doing. We created these fake characters and we’re just trying to figure out what they would do in situations they enter into. We don’t want people to necessarily think that Mickey and Gus are related to Lesley and me, because it’s not true and I don’t want people to think that. If I heard there was a new show, and the creators were writing about how they met, I would be like, “Pass! No thanks.” Instead of watching, I’m going to go off and barf.

Netflix

MJ: Well, how much do the characters mirror your own relationship?

PR: It was just sort of a jumping-off point. These characters were more based on the years before we met each other—we didn’t really meet each other as damaged as they are in the show. Judd, correctly thinking, said that more sparks will be able to fly if these people are in more toxic times in their lives. If Lesley and I did a show that was really about us, it would be extremely boring.

MJ: Lesley has been open about her past struggles with addiction. Has it been difficult for her to revisit the subject as a writer?

PR: I think because she considers Mickey an older part of herself that’s far, far back in her history, it’s not particularly challenging for her.

MJ: I know you lost a friend, the comedian Harris Wittels, to heroin last year. Has that rubbed off on your writing?

PR: Really the effect is all life-affirming stuff. You know, Harris was one of the funniest, most creative people I know. The greatest quality Harris had was his ability to—he would tweet stuff that I would never be able to admit to another person, let alone tweet to thousands of people. This is a guy who really held the torch for being honest.

MJ: You and Harris had a band together called Don’t Stop Or We’ll Die. You also had a band with comedian Charlyne Yi, who appears in Love, called Glass Beef. Where did these band names come from?

PR: Glass Beef came from just putting these words together. We had different understandings: Charlyne saw it as a piece of beef with chunks of glass in it, and I saw it as a glass figurine of beef. Laughs. Don’t Stop Or We’ll Die came from a line in Back to the Future that’s often misheard by people. There’s a part where Michael J. Fox tries to flag down a car, and an old couple starts slowing down, and the elderly woman says to her husband, “Don’t stop Orvel. Drive!” A lot of people think she’s saying, ‘Don’t stop or we’ll die,’ which is such a hilarious, bizarre thing to say to somebody. We started performing music with comedy because it makes it a little easier to get a response that doesn’t require a wig and a funny costume and an accent.

MJ: The archetypal “struggling” TV characters are often in their 20s, but Mickey and Gus are in their early 30s. Does that make for richer comic fodder?

PR: A lot of the day-to-day, minute-to-minute struggles are a bit more taken care of, so it allows you to start asking more existential questions like, “What do I want in life? What’s going to make me happy?” In your 20s, you’re checking your bank account to make sure you’re not broke. In your 30s, you’re looking at yourself and realizing you’re broken.

MJ: What was it like working on Pee-wee’s Big Holiday with Judd and Paul?

PR: Awesome. Paul sensibility is silly and fantastical, Judd’s is more grounded in reality and real feelings. So much of what Judd writes about is some sort of stunted adolescence, and there’s no greater poster boy for that than Pee-wee Herman. Judd is just such a fan of comedy that he likes all parts of it. It was a dream getting to work with Paul because even before I started working with him, I considered Pee-wee’s Big Adventure my favorite comedy. I would try to write a script like that, and I couldn’t, and it would be terrible.

By luck and chance, I was able to get paired with Paul. And I basically got a tutorial in how to write a script like that. The thing I learned most from him is that the more simple and straightforward and stripped down something is, the better it can be. If I took 25 words to write something, Paul could write it in five. His gift of simplicity and minimalism is really what I learned, and I consider him a friend now. As a 10-year-old fan, getting to be friends with Pee-wee is a dream come true.

The first season of Love is now available on Netflix for your binge-watching pleasure.

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Meet the Star of Judd Apatow’s New Netflix Series "Love"

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Aziz Ansari Just Hilariously Burned Television’s Diversity Problem to Stephen Colbert

by EverettDykes522 Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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There’s just no stopping Aziz Ansari.

The comedian reached another level of hero status on Tuesday, appearing on the Late Show to promote his brilliant new Netflix series Master of None. Just seconds after settling into his guest seat, Ansari wasted no time calling out Hollywood’s problems with diversity.

“Stephen’s the first late night host from South Carolina and the bajillionth white guy,” he said, responding to Colbert’s comment that the two of them hailed from the same state. “Very interesting measure of progress.”

When Colbert jokingly asked if his spot on the show counted as a show of progress, Ansari replied, “It’s really diverse right now. It’s 50 percent diverse. It’s like an all-time high for CBS.” Colbert couldn’t contain his admiration and shook Ansari’s hand.

The appearance comes on the heels of rave reviews for Ansari’s new show, which explores everything from romance and the first-generation immigrant experience, to the insidious racism still preventing people of color from securing top-billed acting roles.

On Tuesday, viewers also had a chance to hear from Ansari’s real father, who also plays the father of Ansari’s character on the show. After their appearance together, Ansari posted the following Instagram:

My dad took off most of his vacation time for the year to act in Master of None. So I’m really relieved this all worked out. Tonight after we did Colbert together he said: “This is all fun and I liked acting in the show, but I really just did it so I could spend more time with you.” I almost instantly collapsed into tears at the thought of how much this person cares about me and took care of me and gave me everything to give me the amazing life I have. I felt like a total piece of garbage for all the times I haven’t visited my parents and told them I wanted to stay in New York cause I’d get bored in SC. I’m an incredibly lucky person and many of you are as well. Not to beat a dead horse here and sorry if this is cheesy or too sentimental but if your parents are good to you too, just go do something nice for them. I bet they care and love you more than you realize. I’ve been overwhelmed by the response to the Parents episode of our show. What’s strange is doing that episode and working with my parents has increased the quality of my relationship to my parents IN MY REAL LIFE. In reality, I haven’t always had the best, most open relationship with my parents because we are weirdly closed off emotionally sometimes. But we are getting better. And if you have something like that with your family – I urge you to work at it and get better because these are special people in your life and I get terrified when my dad tells me about friends of his, people close to his age, that are having serious health issues, etc. Enjoy and love these people while you can. Anyway, this show and my experiences with my parents while working on it have been very important in many ways and I thank for you the part you all have played in it.

A photo posted by @azizansari on Nov 11, 2015 at 8:43am PST

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Aziz Ansari Just Hilariously Burned Television’s Diversity Problem to Stephen Colbert

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It’s Time to Change Up the Debate Rules

by CarenRubensohn Posted on October 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Question for those of you who watched last night’s debate: what did you think of the questions the moderators asked?

It was an odd display. The wording of the questions often veered close to outright rudeness. For example:

Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?
You’re skipping more votes than any senator to run for president. Why not slow down, get a few more things done first or least finish what you start?
In terms of all of that, it raises the question whether you have the maturity and wisdom to lead this $17 trillion economy.

At the same time, if you take a look an inch below the surface, most of the questions the CNBC crew asked were actually very substantive. The candidates generally didn’t feel like engaging with anything other than their plans to cut taxes and slash regulations, but that’s not the fault of the moderators. That’s because it’s a Republican debate, and these are pretty much the only economic issues Republican candidates like to talk about.

This year’s debates have all followed a similar pattern, with the moderators asking each candidate at least one “tough” question near the beginning of the show. Fox did it too, and Anderson Cooper did it to the Democrats, so it’s not a liberal media conspiracy. Mostly it seems to be some kind of alpha chimp display to demonstrate that the moderators are real live journalists, not just pretty faces letting the candidates make stump speeches.

I didn’t really mind this the first time or two, but I’m starting to find it annoying. Fine: you folks are real journalists. Now let’s move on and ask questions that are really tough. Dig a little more deeply into policy and then follow up. Maybe switch up the rules and get rid of the “anyone who’s named gets 30 second to respond” nitwittery. Give the moderators a couple of minutes for each question, and make it a real back-and-forth. Less mud wrestling and more policy depth.

It probably wouldn’t work. I’m not sure there’s any power on earth that can get the candidates off their rehearsed talking points. But it might be worth a try.

POSTSCRIPT: And on the candidate side, how about giving the attacks on the media a rest? I know it’s a great applause line, but honestly, who cares? It’s just pandering. Find something new to get applause for.

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It’s Time to Change Up the Debate Rules

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